Timothy Noel's Biography

Timothy Noel,
Associate Professor,
Eindhoven University of Technology

Timothy Noël received in 2004 his MSc degree (Industrial Chemical Engineering) from the KaHo Sint-Lieven in Ghent. He then moved to Ghent University to obtain a PhD at the Laboratory for Organic and Bioorganic Synthesis (2005-2009). Next, he moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor Stephen L. Buchwald. At MIT, he worked at the MIT-Novartis Center for Continuous Manufacturing. He currently holds a position as an associate professor in the Micro Flow Chemistry & Process Technology group at Eindhoven University of Technology. His research interests are flow chemistry, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis and organic synthesis.

A Conceptually New Photomicroreactor Design for Energy-efficient Solar Photochemistry

We will present our results concerning a novel device integrating the luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) concept with photomicroreactors, allowing the direct use of solar light in photochemistry without the need for any intermediate energy conversion. This leaf-inspired photomicroreactor based on fluorescent dye-embedded polydimethylsiloxane collects sunlight, focuses the energy to a narrow wavelength region, and then transports that energy to embedded microchannels where the flowing reactants are converted.